Panama's Election Seals A
Strong
Free Market Orientation
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| Photo by Juliette Passer 2014 |
Defying
polls, conservative Juan Carlos Varela won Panama's election Sunday, showing
that five years of free-market policies merit another five. If he holds course,
it's the best possible outcome.
Nobody
thought the openly conservative Juan Carlos Varela could pull off a five-year
term in Panama. The former vice president had been been running third in the
polls and faced the negative headwinds of Ricardo Martinelli's five-year
conservative rule. It especially didn't help that Panama's incumbent parties almost
always do poorly in successive votes.
But
Varela, who is believed to be at least as conservative as his predecessor,
managed to distinguish himself from the status quo.
He
did so by breaking with Martinelli in 2011 over the latter's ill-conceived plan
to extend his own stay in office, compounded by a ridiculous and probably
unconstitutional move to place his wife, Marta Linares, on the ticket of his
hand-picked candidate, Jose Domingo Arias, as vice president.
Net
effect: Varela was able to run as an anti-corruption outsider, a better thing
for Panama to focus on than a populist referendum on free-market ideas that is
often badly argued, despite Panama's 8.2% average growth rate over the past
decade.
The
left-wing candidate, former Panama City mayor Juan Carlos Navarro, garnered
just 28% of the vote. Varela won with 39%.
It's
a resounding vote for continuing the free-market policies that have opened
Panama to the world with free trade, put the nation in the global trade
spotlight with its multibillion-dollar expansion and ensured the country's
economic shift from shipping to banking, services, medical tourism and new
entrepreneurship. And it may just open the door to improving Panama's
governance as well, if Varela is truly anti-corruption.
The
election not only seals Panama's free market orientation, it also leaves Panama
with two competing conservative parties, something similar to the Tea Party and
the GOP, and certainly parallel to Colombia, where two center-right parties
also dominate and compete.
But it's
worth something only if Varela stays the course with what worked during
Martinelli's administration.
Martinelli
not only brought growth to Panama, he was also dazzling on the foreign-policy
front, repeatedly showing leadership against the region's dictators in
democratic clothing.
He
was the first to break with the Latin consensus that Honduras be isolated after
its legislature removed a communist dictator, Mel Zelaya, from power — and
swung the region his way.
He
also spectacularly exposed arms trafficking between Cuba and North Korea
through the Panama Canal, via the power of a Twitter photo — which meant that
the matter could not be covered up.
And
when Venezuela exploded into an orgy of government thug-rule last February,
Martinelli was the one Latin American president who blasted the barbarism and
took in thousands of Venezuelan refugees fleeing the hellhole as the regime cut
ties.
